American Railroads: At This Moment 1954 Westinghouse Air Brake Company; Jam Handy

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'Importance of railroads to 1950s America.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Air_Brake_Company

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Westinghouse Air Brake Company (sometimes nicknamed or abbreviated WABCO although this was also confusingly used for spinoffs) was founded on September 28, 1869 by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Earlier in the year he had invented the railway air brake in New York state.

After having manufactured equipment in Pittsburgh for a number of years, he began to construct facilities and plants East of the city where homes for his employees were built. In 1889, the air brake manufacturing facility was moved to Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, and the company's general office building was built there in 1890.

WABCO's direct successor companies include WABCO Vehicle Control Systems, a commercial vehicle air brake manufacturer; and Wabtec, a railway equipment manufacturer, which have been owned and operated independently of each other since the mid-twentieth century...

Development of Westinghouse Air Brake

The straight air brake

The first form of the air brake consisted of an air pump, a main reservoir (pressure vessel), and an engineer's valve on the locomotive, and of a train pipe and brake cylinder on each car. One problem with this first form of the air brake was that braking was applied to the first cars in a train much sooner than to the rear cars, resulting in shocks and damages when the rear cars bunted against the cars ahead of them.

The main objection, however, was that it was not an automatic brake, i.e. even a minor mishap like a broken coupling left the entire train without any brake power at all.

The plain automatic air brake

In 1872, George Westinghouse invented the automatic air brake by inventing the triple valve and by equipping each car with its own air cylinder. Air pressure is maintained in the auxiliary reservoirs and in the train pipe at all times when the brakes are not applied. An equilibrium of air pressure is maintained in the train pipe and in the auxiliary air cylinders.

To apply the brakes to all of the cars at about the same time, pressure is released from the train pipe, causing the triple valve on each car to apply the brakes. To release the brakes on each car, pressure is increased in the train pipe until an excess pressure above that of the pressure in each auxiliary cylinder is reached, which throws the triple valve so as to close the inlet to the brake cylinder and open the inlet to the auxiliary reservoir from the train pipe, thus allowing the equilibrium of the two pressures to be reached.

The quick action triple valve

Although the plain automatic air brake was a great improvement over the straight air brake, in an emergency the system still applied the brakes to the last cars in a train later than to the first cars in a train. To remedy that condition, George Westinghouse invented the quick action triple valve in 1887. This triple valve system was tested by George Westinghouse on the CB&Q West Burlington hill (Iowa) during 1887. It automatically vents air from the brake pipe locally on each car, which applies the brakes more quickly.

Electric railways

For the air brake to be employed on electric railways, an air compressor that is powered by electricity is required. Powerful electric locomotives were produced by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company and by other companies...